COVID showed students and parents that schools were not about education for the future. They learned that teachers wanted to control the process, that radicals used curriculum to indoctrinate the students. They learned that classrooms are not safe places for young people. So, is it any surprise students do not go to school and parents will not force their kids into dangerous places that do not educate?
“Ventura County public school students continued to miss school at historic rates during the 2022-23 school year, further crystallizing a post-pandemic trend.
Across the county, 22% of students were chronically absent last school year, a small improvement from 2021-22, but still more than twice pre-pandemic rates.
Yet school districts, like SVUSD are going to place hundreds of millions of dollars for bonds on the November, 2024 ballot—in the face of declining enrollment and at least a 20% absentee rate. This is about political power, paying off friends, unions and donors, not about education.
Chronic absenteeism among Ventura County students stays close to post-pandemic high
Isaiah Murtaugh, Ventura County Star. 11/18/23 https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/education/schoolwatch/2023/11/18/ventura-county-students-are-missing-school-at-historic-rates/71625789007/ttps://www.vcstar.com/story/news/education/schoolwatch/2023/11/18/ventura-county-students-are-missing-school-at-historic-rates/71625789007/0
Ventura County public school students continued to miss school at historic rates during the 2022-23 school year, further crystallizing a post-pandemic trend.
Across the county, 22% of students were chronically absent last school year, a small improvement from 2021-22, but still more than twice pre-pandemic rates.
Researchers fear the trend, most acute among students of color and those facing external challenges like homelessness and the foster system, isn’t reversing nearly as quickly as it began.
“There’s this inertia we’re still overcoming after a year and a half of distance learning,” said Jeannie Myung, director of policy research for the Stanford-based group Policy Analysis for California Education. “Families are starting to consider attendance optional rather than compulsory.”
That’s a problem, Myung said, because research has tied chronic absenteeism to lower grades and lower rates of high school completion and college readiness.
“This is one of those really big threats that needs to be dealt with,” she said.
County schools have fared slightly better than California public schools overall. In 2018-19, the last full pre-pandemic year 12% of California’s students were chronically absent — defined as missing at least 10% of the school year — compared to 9% in Ventura County.
By the 2021-22 year, the statewide rate spiked to 30%. The rate fell to 25% last year, a larger year-to-year decrease than Ventura County but still 3% higher overall.
César Morales, superintendent of the Ventura County Office of Education, touted the county’s improvement in an Oct. 26 statement following the release of statewide absenteeism data.
“We’re happy to report that Ventura County schools are making progress,” he wrote.
Thomas Dee, a Stanford professor who in August published a study on chronic absenteeism rates nationwide, said that the “modest” improvements across the state aren’t big enough. The numbers, he said, still show a “crisis.”
“There was this sense that (the 2021-22 school year) was kind of a one off. The current data shows that’s not a thing,” Dee said. “The fact that (the rate) remains 3 in 4 students as opposed to 1 in 3 is cold comfort,”
Widening gaps
State data shows that chronic absenteeism rates are typically higher for some historically marginalized groups like Black and Latino students, students in the foster system and homeless students.
In the wake of the pandemic, those gaps grew even larger.
While chronic absenteeism rates increased for virtually every demographic, they increased especially quickly for the county’s Pacific Islander and Latino students. Rates for foster youth, homeless youth and students with disabilities, already well above the county average, skyrocketed.
Myung, the Stanford policy researcher, said the education challenges introduced by the pandemic — remote learning, decreased social interaction — hit hardest where students were already facing significant obstacles like unstable housing situations or decreased family income.
Mike Winters, director of student services for the county education office, noted in an emailed statement that absenteeism rates among foster youth in Ventura County dropped below 45% last year, a nearly seven-point decrease from the year prior.
“Students in foster care experience school changes more than their non-foster care peers,” he wrote.
Santa Paula Unified School District, which serves 4,900 students from transitional kindergarten to grade 12, saw one of the county’s largest increases in chronic absenteeism immediately after the pandemic, from 9% to nearly 33%.
But last year, the district had one of the county’s largest percentage decreases, dropping down to 26%.
Letitia Bradley, the district’s director of student services, partially credits the drop to the district’s all-angle approach, providing some students with food, gas cards and rides to school via specialty rideshare company HopSkipDrive. If a student regularly calls in sick, Bradley said, the district assigns a staff nurse to call home.
“If you hit the personal and social-emotional, then the academic will come,” Bradley said. “We try to remove every barrier that comes in front of students.”
Shifting parent mindsets
Dee, the Stanford professor, said the data has yet to reveal a distinct cause for the nationwide increase in chronic absenteeism. His research, he said, showed no clear evidence that parents were responding to school health restrictions like masking.
Only one factor, he said, appears to somewhat indicate which states had the biggest increases: the extent to which schools closed during the 2020-21 school year.
“Parents and children lost the habit,” he said.
Briggs Elementary School District serves about 500 students from kindergarten to grade eight in two Santa Paula schools. Superintendent Carlos Dominguez worked in Hueneme Elementary School District before joining Briggs this year. He said he’s seen a shift in parental behavior.
“During the pandemic, the expectation of what an excused absence was pretty clear: Anytime a student wasn’t feeling well, regardless of whether it was COVID-related or not, the kid stayed home,” he said.
But though the pandemic has somewhat subsided and school policies around keeping children with runny noses home have relaxed, Dominguez said some parents aren’t easing up as quickly.
“There’s still some confusion about what the restrictions are,” he said. “They still believe some of these COVID restrictions are in place.”Oak Park Unified School District superintendent Jeff Davis said he’s seen similar trends.
“I think our parents are being very responsible,” he said.
Christina Harrison, director of student support services for Conejo Valley Unified School District, agreed.
“We used to tell kids: ‘If you’re not vomiting, come to school.’ Now, we say: ‘If you feel sick stay home,'” Harrison said.
Bradley said Santa Paula Unified has seen a larger number of students stay home for mental health purposes, an allowable excuse under a 2021 California law. The district is trying to address the problem through its campus wellness centers, and when needed, virtual counseling appointments.
All four district leaders said they are pushing to get their absenteeism numbers down, providing support to families facing socioeconomic headwinds, rebuilding the sense of community on school campuses and recommunicating expectations about attendance to their students.
“We made a very concerted effort to put out messaging,” Davis said. “Please come to school. It’s very important.”
All four district leaders also said absenteeism numbers are already showing signs of improvement this year, probably in part due to new protocol recommendations that keep COVID-positive students home only for five days instead of 10.
But there’s still a ways to go, said Bradley.
“I think we’ll probably feel the impacts of COVID for quite some time,” she said.
